Tag Archive: Saturday Night Live

One hundred and twenty episodes in of his first year at the helm of The Tonight Show and somehow we managed to fail to mention Jimmy Fallon’s incredible big year here in our ongoing quest for the best in entertainment. We’ve watched Fallon since his days on Saturday Night Live and figured we’d give him a try as he took over for Jay Leno. We gave the same college try to Conan O’Brien when he started out on his TBS gig, but that show quickly fizzled out. Fallon hit the ground running, taking comedic bits from his Late Night hosting stint and expanding them into the weightier format of the classic king spot of nightly live comedy. And we haven’t laughed out loud this much in a year in a long time.

Go back and watch David Letterman, Leno or Johnny Carson late show episodes on YouTube and you’ll quickly ask yourself why we thought those guys were so funny. We’re saying this after years of enjoying the best of The Tonight Show for decades. Fallon’s sincere, boy-next-door-makes-good, and unapologetic fanboy image was a perfect choice for this show, and his use of social media incorporated into his weekly line-up makes the show potentially appealing to every demographic.

Credit goes to Fallon, of course, but also his great writing staff that comes up with all this fun, as well as The Roots, the complicit house band (probably the coolest band ever to appear on a regular TV gig), and Fallon’s own Ed McMahon, the quick-witted banter partner, Des Moines native Steve Higgins.

Recurring bits include Fallon’s obsession with Canadian politician Rob Ford, New Jersey governor Chris Christie and Vice President Joe Biden, the Eww girl, and a would-be one-time stint dancing bear that became the out-of-breath show mascot Hashtag the Panda. Fallon’s “Pros and Cons,” “Thank You Notes,” and “Hashtags” are now locked into the national weekly calendar. Fallon also gets the best A-list celebrities around on his show on a regular basis, and even entices many to play crazy party games and lip sync battles or act in skits like you’d see on the best days of Saturday Night Live.

Nerd HQ offered up a great variety of panels from the best of TV Saturday. Here are some great panels to check out. After four years of 45 minute panels offered just yards from San Diego Comic-Con, many of these have become a source for stand-up comedy from the actors. See for yourself.

First up what may be the best panel idea ever, the voices and muppets themselves, from Sesame Street, Grover, Cookie Monster, Bert, and Murray. And Grover reveals the true identity of Super Grover. This one can’t be missed.

Over the years annual comedic casts have changed, with Not Ready for Prime Time Players sometimes brilliantly funny and sometimes not so much. Traditional fans look back to the first two seasons to the best cast ever, where superstars Jim Belushi, Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, and even frequent guest Steve Martin, were all propelled to become household names. Later casts included Second City greats such as Christopher Guest and Martin Short. Some of the biggest names in Hollywood were once members of the SNL cast: Eddie Murphy, Adam Sandler, Mike Myers, and Will Ferrell included. And in all this time we lost a few guys whose careers themselves pretty much peaked on SNL: John Belushi, Phil Hartman, and Chris Farley.

It’s difficult not to make a favorites list of SNL not top heavy in favor of the classic skits from the first seasons of SNL, but we made an effort to spread out some great skits across the decades, and we left out skits with Alec Baldwin that we inclued in our review earlier this week.

Last month, Saturday Night Live celebrated 36 consecutive years of live television. It’s a show like no other, and since the beginning back in 1975 producer Lorne Michaels hand selected stand-up comics and comedic actors to be featured in skits that spoofed everything from presidents to commercials, and in doing so, he launched the careers of some of the biggest names in Hollywood over the course of those 36 years. A lot of SNL recurring characters even made it to the movie theaters, like The Blues Brothers, Coneheads, and Wayne’s World. And this summer Ben and Jerry’s even named an ice cream flavor after both the subject of a memorable skit, Shweddy Balls, and a former Weekend Update actor, Jimmy Fallon, and his late night TV show. And Michaels’s hosts also used SNL as a career springboard, with major actors duelling for “most host” status.

This week’s SNL featured the star behind the Shweddy Balls skit, none other than the brilliant and hilarious dramatic and comedic actor, Alec Baldwin. Unlike Mel Gibson or Charlie Sheen, Baldwin is like Teflon–the guy bounces back from whatever missteps he causes or situations he stumbles into. But going back to his performance as a jerk on 40 episodes of Knots Landing (where he fell off a roof trying to kill his wife), attitude is just part of the guy’s schtick. In fact, if I was working on the re-launch of Dallas that is coming back next year, with Larry Hagman again as J.R. Ewing, I would resurrect Baldwin’s Joshua Rush to take over South Fork from J.R. (recall Knots Landing was a Dallas spinoff).

After his big death scene on Knots Landing the next big thing audiences saw was his role as a kindly husband who met an untimely end with Geena Davis in Beetlejuice. Baldwin is also the only actor able to fill the shoes of Jack Ryan in the Tom Clancy novels. There’s just no better Jack Ryan portrayal than Baldwin in Hunt for Red October opposite Sean Connery. From there Baldwin went on to receive critical acclaim in dramatic roles, usually as over the top, larger than life characters, in Glengarry Glen Ross, Mercury Rising, Pearl Harbor, The Aviator, The Departed, The Good Shepherd, and finally his current run back on network TV on 30 Rock. In The Cooler, he was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actor, and his other roles have earned him Golden Globes and Emmys, with dozens of nominations.

As for Baldwin’s relationship with SNL, he is one of the few to belong to the Five Timer’s Club, a group of celebrities who has hosted the show more than five times. As host of 16 episodes, Baldwin has hosted more than any other person, followed by Steve Martin at 15 episodes (if you’re curious about recurring musical guests, two of my faves, Paul Simon and Tom Petty, lead that list). So what better time than now for 10 skits from Saturday Night Live to remind you why we like Alec Baldwin? For a bit of a change we’ve pulled most of the list from skits that didn’t make his “Best of SNL” DVD.

First up, if you don’t watch any other skit, just in time for the holidays, check out this first one from an alternate universe December 12, 2011, featuring Jimmy Fallon and Alec Baldwin, filmed over a decade ago:

A familiar group in the original costume and prop collecting arena attended Comic-Con again this year. We ran into Jon Mankuta and Brian Chanes from Profiles in History on the convention floor Friday. They also create the SyFy network show Hollywood Treasure, a show I regularly watch to see both the discoveries they find, the collectors of Hollywood memorabilia (like a guy that looks like Santa Claus who has a house full of rare costumes from movies like Elf and A Christmas Story), and, of course, the costumes and props themselves.

Jon Mankuta from the auction house and TV show eyed our Alien Nation latex heads from across the main walkway in the heart of the convention floor and had a guy in the crowd snap this shot.

Jon is one of those guys that when you see him you have this feeling like you’ve known him for years. He was having fun at the Con like every other fanboy in the crowd, checking out the booths and sporting a Lost T-shirt. Jon actually played one of The Others in the Lost TV series and among other acting gigs he performed in sketches during the 2002-2006 years of Saturday Night Live. It was great meeting someone working at an auction house who gets as excited seeing artifacts from movies just as much as the rest of us. Coincidentally, later in the day Brian Chanes grabbed us in the crowd for a similar photo. Later in the weekend we met up with Brian again (below right) and Profiles president Joe Maddalena (below left):

Profiles is a great resource for screen-used props and costumes of every price range–Profiles is the auction house we featured in earlier posts that sold that record breaking Marilyn Monroe dress from Seven Year Itch, among other pieces in the Debbie Reynolds Collection. I have also had the pleasure of working with Fong Sam at the auction house, a great guy who coordinates prop and costume auctions and takes phone bids on auction day.

In past years at Comic-Con, Profiles in History had featured an advance look at props from various movies and TV series that were to be featured in upcoming auctions. This year they linked up with Desi DosSantos from Screenused.com who has a nice collection of Back to the Future costumes and props. His crown jewel is one of the DeLorean Time Machine cars from the series (from the third movie in the franchise). Profiles in History and Desi worked with the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research (TEAMFOX.org) this year to take photos of convention-goers sitting in the car for a $20 donation, raising more than $11,000 for the charity. Nice job! And if you missed seeing the Time Machine car at Comic-Con, the San Diego Air and Space Museum will have it on display through August 13, 2011.

Strangely enough, the Profiles in History booth did not have the only Back to the Future car at Comic-Con. On the other side of the convention center a replica Time Machine was on display (a DeLorean updated with replica movie parts under the direction of the film’s director, Robert Zemeckis), creating a sort of deja vu for the crowd. (The replica is pictured at the top of this post).

And if you need your own Back to the Future Time Machine DeLorean, keep an eye out for the December Profiles in History auction where the real car from the Profiles booth will be auctioned, along with part 2 of the Debbie Reynolds auction.